XBMC Is Being Renamed To "Kodi"

The XBMC project has shared with us that they're renaming the project entirely to something very different in order to no longer reflect its past Xbox Media Center name.

Beginning with the next major release, what would be known as XBMC 14, the project will be called Kodi 14. Kodi is replacing XBMC as the name to avoid confusion with the past name, potential legal issues, etc. XBMC shared with us their announcement in advance and the embargo has just expired.

XBMC's explanation reads, "Beyond the nonsensical nature of the software’s name, there is a secondary issue. Because “XBMC” was originally based on the name Xbox, the developers of the software (that’s us) have never had any sort of legal control over the use of its name, which has resulted in a whole slew of problems. In the past few years, we have seen the mass confusion that resulted from this lack of control first hand. Users have been fooled into wasting money buying boxes running hacked and typically broken versions of XBMC. News sites and blogs have gotten caught in confusing language numerous times. Unrelated fan communities, often founded under the best of intentions, have found themselves under attack, simply because no guidelines existed to simplify the process of clearly distinguishing themselves from the XBMC Foundation. What’s more, the Foundation itself and all of its developers have always operated under a potential legal threat from other companies that did have a legal trademark in a similar name. And that legal threat has actually gotten more problematic in recent years. Because all these problems have been getting more and more pronounced, the Foundation decided to review its options with the help of the legal team at the Software Freedom Law Center. In the end, it was decided renaming the software that we all love so much was the most realistic solution. We’ve done it twice before. We believe this time Kodi will be the name we can keep forever."

Their announcement concludes, "There’s still a long ways to go in the renaming process. A ton of code has to be changed to reflect the new name. So many websites, webpages, social networks, and other things have to be updated. Much of the trademark legalese needs to be reviewed by the lawyers and government officials. The logo has to be finished. Needless to say, the upcoming Kodi developers conference this year is certainly going to be intense as we work through these issues. But we believe that with your support and the support of the whole community, Kodi, the media center or entertainment platform or whatever you choose to call it that we’ve all come to love will be even stronger than it was before."

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the web-site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience and being the largest web-site devoted to Linux hardware reviews, particularly for products relevant to Linux gamers and enthusiasts but also commonly reviewing servers/workstations and embedded Linux devices. Michael has written more than 10,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics hardware drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated testing software. He can be followed via Twitter and Google+ or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.